Alas, this could be seen coming... as a site such as Patreon becomes a "mainstream success", they begin becoming vulnerable to wishing to please would-be advertisers, financers and investors from the mainstream.

But, before we get too riled up at the corporate capitalist pigs, let us remember that on the opposite side of the spectrum you'll have the Professional Left harrumphing as to how your porn content perpetuates patriarchal rape culture.

So if you become successful you come under fire from both sides and the answer is to be successful along the lines of safe middle-of-the-road social acceptability. Already before the crackdown on "fringe porn" Patreon (and in the non-porn realm, YouTube and other sites) had made some moves in the direction of de-monetizing some politically controversial/fringe producers. As private businesses, it's their call, but in that case let's all be clear that no, they are NOT here to help us find an audience and make a living. They are here to make a buck for their corporate parent, or to become valuable enough to one day sell out to a corporate parent, if they don't have one yet.

As has been mentioned in various articles on the subject, part of the problem here is that Adult Content tends to be "zoned" out to a web neighborhood of expensive payment processing middlemen, of hosting sites that will steal and repackage your material, of being classed as "unsafe" by various gatekeeping services. It is extremely hard for an individual creator of porn content to become independently capable of running a small business online, and they keep losing both showcases and marketplaces._________________Cheo1, Cheo-1, Cheo_D or plain Cheo... it's still me, don't be confused... Boards just all have different conventions for usernames

Unsure why HF would be worse for this, as it is, HF turned into a shopfront for Patreon in the last couple of years. A great deal of content on HF is now either tiny, censored, cropped, or altogether not published at all directly because of Patreon. "Here, have some sampling scrap that is way worse than what you have been having 5 years ago, pay up for the rest on Patreon" is the MO of a great deal of artists on HF now.

It might be worse for artists of course but I'm not getting why it's worse for HF as a site itself. HF had better content before Patreon era.

For sake of clarity and consistency. Out of 16 popular artists you currently watch, a bulk of them are crowdsourced or used Patreon to help make more ongoing content. So if you genuinely felt non-Patreon Era Artist were better for your taste...why is the bulk of your watch list Patreon artists? You watch them because they had better content.

There are plenty of awesome non-Patreon/crowdsource artist who do contribute, but generally not as ambitious as a quality fund projects that they share.

"It might be worse for artists of course but I'm not getting why it's worse for HF as a site itself." -Shuntensatsu

Art community needs artists, fans, and ongoing artwork to thrive. Those popular crowdsource artist you watch combined have larger galleries to share, and over +60,000 followers. This in turn brings in tremendous views, happy fans, and more AD revenues for Hentai Foundry. The benefits are mutual.

The day those crowdsource artist get no support, get backstabbed, or quit their maintaining their galleries. The less reason for those fans to visit Hentai Foundry including yourself. Hentai Foundry takes a hit, there's less art to go around to satisfy hungry fans. If you could take opportunity to read the open letter or related articles it mentions fan like you have the power to help push that back on unreasonable terms that could prematurely close your favorite artist's gallery.

I'm happy for you Shuntensatsu, that Hentai Foundry was able to help you find the artists that truly you like. It's awesome whenever a fan +likes, watches, or share the art they enjoy. Thank you for that.

Other artist Patreon Account under review, banned or suspended. Feel free to post more as you see them who got effected.

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[...]as far as i've understood it, Patreon still allow written and drawn pornographic material, as long as real people aren't involved- such as photography or real-life recordings. -Konani

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Lastly, you cannot sell pornographic material or arrange sexual service(s) as a reward for your patrons. We define pornographic material as real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera. You can’t use Patreon to raise funds in order to produce pornographic material such as maintaining a website, funding the production of movies, or providing a private webcam session.

Unfortunately Jack Conte mislead people and moved the goal post. Illustrations, fictional characters been hit and lumped in. Even PG 13 content gets flagged. The open letter warned of this purge.

Floods more Patreon accounts being suspended, posted on twitter and on Reddit. The Patreon Reddit mods can't keep up so they started to lock threads or downplay the mass purge.

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I read your long FB post about your interactions with Patreon on this issue, and I could feel your increasing frustration. It seems very odd to allow NSFW creators on Patreon, and then tell them they can't actually mention or show what it is they create on their pages. -lisavollrath[M]

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Yes. Not just allow them, actively court them and then reassure them that all is fine in Patreon land. Until now. And they just keep saying 'our guidelines have not changed'. [...]

Nope - they are suspending accounts for much more than that. I break none of those rules. they are now talking like this: -RubyRyder(Creator)

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There are already endless threads about this issue posted in this subreddit. Since none of those threads have produced any sort of reason behind this month's mass suspensions, I'm going to close this to comments.

ETA: These suspensions have been happening for several weeks. [–]lisavollrath[M]

Its not Patreon, is their payment processor putting the screws to them.

Thanks for the article.

I'm skeptical because Patreon decides their payment processor and like to pass the buck a lot. Before Patreon insist Paypal won't accept nsfw/adult content in transaction or non negotiation, but we all know that's false. You can go to ebay/paypal and buy adult films or adult toys with paypal. (Previously ebay bought out paypal) "Epoch and PayPal had a partnership in Europe whereby PayPal made payments through Epoch for different websites (presumably some adult). The partnership was successful.[...]Paypal's User Agreement still forbids "sexually oriented services". The fact that it must know about the Epoch PayPal option is an.invitation for a user to violate the Use Agreement whenever the user uses the Epoch option."

"We have been ramping up the proactive review of content on Patreon due to requirements from our payment partners,” a Patreon spokesperson told me in an email. “Our community guidelines have not changed, and when we discover a page that is not in compliance with our guidelines we place that page in a state of suspension and work directly with the creator to bring them back within our guidelines. We have also doubled the size of our support team to ensure we get back to creators and give them 1-1 guidance as fast as humanly possible." 2018

The article shows Patreon claims are false and misleading. It shows in fact they did move the goal post, changed their guidelines. Had a lot of empty promises. They double their team to hunt down any mature content creators at using bot like letters of suspension. Creators who refute them, get no response back or have to wait long for any feedback.

Regardless if creator actually breaking any rules they never agree too, this effectively sabotage creators campaign as fans who paid for art content are locked out of their rewards would just leave.

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In late 2017, Patreon expanded its adult content guidelines, to include stricter guidelines for "bestiality, incest, sexual depiction of minors, and suggestive sexual violence." At the time, it resulted in suspensions and bans of many adult content creators whose work Patreon previously permitted, but no longer fell in line with new guidelines.

As Jack Conte admits and allowed “R-rated” content, but that description was ineffective at clearly explaining our policy to the community. We define pornographic material as real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera.

[...]He added that most creators on the site “have nothing to be concerned about”.

I talked to someone who had this happen to them and they said that patreon promised to un-suspend their page after they mark all content that is nude or shows 'implied nudity' (in this case it was a thong) as patron-only, even if their whole account is marked 18+. However it said processing could take up to 45 days. Very frustrating but hopefully it will mean people's pages aren't gone indefinitely._________________✿ commission mailing list ✿

@fralea yikes 45 days a long time. Even creators who got sick for two weeks can lose many impatient fans if any rewards are delayed.

Here's another list of patreon creators, that got either suspended, banned, underview for mature content purge or quit. Many of these creators signed the open letter asking Patreon to keep their word and not abandon adult content creators. There's hundreds more gone but it's depressing to sort them all...

My account got suspended too and I had to switch of all my public posts to Patron only to get my account back.
Thankfully I'm one of the lucky few that got my account back after about 3 days.
Still stressful to get suspended right before I was supposed to get paid and without any warning.
I hope other creators get their pages back quickly.

@OppaiMagpie that's great news you got your page back. Hopefully other's will too and your content isn't too water down by censorship that it loses sponsorship.

@BozR some people got their account resolved in a week, other over a month, or stuck indefinitely. Shown in the previous post and reddit thread.

It is unsettling to see a large list of creators gone. You can verify and see many were active creators that signed this petition. They could have been banned, suspended, quit, or boycott for speaking up or purged by the new policy.

As you can see they too got hit and moved from Patreon. They are happy, hardworking, and thriving. Not everybody has a happy ending, others who went full time on Patreon as adult creators end up going belly up and had their account, fans, and funds owed to them locked. They would be force to jettison everything they built and melt back to normal civilian life/day time job. As bills would pile up.

Like many others the suspension timing is also near pay out, as Patreon can pocket and lock funds owned to creators. My friends and I lost around a thousand dollars that help fund on going art content and bills.

“Patreon won’t pull the rug out from a creator’s income, even in the case of a policy violation.” -Jack Conte

In a previous pattern letter sent 6/27/2018. “While your account is suspended you will not process payments.” -Pateron Guidelines

So they are pulling the rug out of creators income and repeatedly violate their own policy. Creators hope Patreon would be fair and cooperate with honoring what Patreon advertised and promised. It's good to move on if you can't trust or count on your business partner. I'm happy for those still hanging in there and your fans are okay with watering down your content to appease Patreon. If you able to work something out that's still good news. The best way for artist to grow is keep creating and follow their heart.